With America’s financial mooring on the brink of an embarrassing political failure, the sudden

Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)The Associated Press/file

poor health of former President George H.W. Bush has gone largely un-noticed.

Bush, 88, spent Christmas in the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner effectively called it quits on pre-holiday negotiations to comprehensively repair the country’s debt ceiling crisis.

Though both men have returned to talks, it’s now a foregone conclusion that the nation will go over the so-called "fiscal cliff," a cocktail of steep tax hikes and severe spending cut deterrents purported to be so devastating that the president and Congress would be compelled to act.

Bush would have never allowed that to happen — in principle or in deed.

Perhaps the most well-prepared American to ever assume the presidency, Bush sacrificed his own political clout, his fiscal ideology, and even his presidential legacy for the nation’s greater good.

Because he enjoyed a record high 89 percent approval rating following the Gulf War, serious Democrats balked at challenging him. He ultimately faced a Democratic challenger pool so skittish that an unknown, inexperienced Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton was the party nominee.

Bush lost his re-election bid because he determined that violating his hugely popular pledge — "Read my lips, no new taxes" — was the best thing for the nation.

As a result, he joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Herbert Hoover in becoming some of the most ostracized creatures in American politics — one-term presidents.

But the nation’s 41st president didn’t raise taxes arbitrarily. Faced with the same budget concern and same loggerhead between budget-cutting Republicans and tax-raising Democrats of today, Bush placed his own political fate in peril and agreed to raise taxes in order to gain the needed spending cuts.

His balanced approach was scuttled by agitated mercenary congressional members of his own party, resigning him to back the tax-hike-heavy Democrat approach.

Bush made the sacrifice because he saw it as the best and most direct remedy for Reagan-era deficits and a mild recession that the unfettered free market was unable to right on it’s own.

The loss surely burned in the belly of Bush, whose family had been involved at the highest levels of national service since his ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

But despite the embarrassing loss, and his low-key retirement from politics, Bush never lowered his head in shame. And in a testament to Bush’s public service, he is now revered by Clinton — the man who ousted him from the White House.

Like scores of others from World War II’s greatest generation, the former Naval pilot – who was shot down during a bombing raid over the Pacific — put country before self over and over.

That’s a quality sorely lacking in Washington’s political leadership today.

Obama is certainly an historic and charismatic political figure, but his inability to address the most pressing challenge to the nation’s financial solvency will not be remembered well.

History won’t recall in any significant fashion who was speaker, or that there was a rabid faction of tea party-inspired obstructionist Republican budget hawks in the House. It will only recognize the name of the president when the nation failed to get itself out of a deepening financial quagmire.

To be fair, both Obama and Boehner have tried to acknowledge the merits of the other party’s argument.

Few would argue with the Republican contention that the federal government promises the world, spends too much, and delivers too little.

And with the nation slowly dragging itself from a market-driven recession, the Democrats’ position — namely, that the greed and wanton excesses of corporate America threaten the very existence of the country’s middle class bedrock — rings frighteningly true.

But the inability of Obama, Boehner and rank-and-file congressional members to sacrifice of themselves, as Bush did, will leave the nation in a deeper hole than where they found it when they first came to Washington.

Meanwhile, the very independent thinkers like Bush — who are needed in Congress — are becoming a vanishing breed.

They’re either being run out by naked partisanship — as in the case of outgoing U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine — or being voted out as in the case of U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, D-Schuylkill County, and U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Indiana.

The departure of independent lawmakers leaves the nation at the mercy of the do-nothing government the political parties have constructed through gerrymandering, and the electorate has voted for.

Asked during the summer what he thought of today’s Washington gridlock and the unmoving posture of the GOP on taxes and spending, Bush told "Parade" magazine that the pledge many congressional Republicans have made to fiscal chaperone Grover Norquist was misplaced and ill-advised.

"The rigidity of those pledges is something I don’t like," he said. "The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. ... Who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?"

To be sure, it was well-meaning moderates such as Bush that helped get the United States into this financial mess in the first place.

But it won’t be dogmatic extremists like Norquist, a self-survival-focused speaker, or a sheepish president that will get the nation out of it either.

Featured Story

Get 'Today's Front Page' in your inbox

This newsletter is sent every morning at 6 a.m. and includes the morning's top stories, a full list of obituaries, links to comics and puzzles and the most recent news, sports and entertainment headlines.

optionalCheck here if you do not want to receive additional email offers and information.See our privacy policy

Thank you for signing up for 'Today's Front Page'

To view and subscribe to any of our other newsletters, please click here.